Reality television should really only do reunion shows when tensions between cast members reach epic levels. That's when you bring in a live audience and settle the whole thing in a lukewarm vat of coleslaw. VH1 knows this, and the network did a fine job with whipping up the tornado of press-on nails and horse hair that was the Flavor of Love reunion shows—everyone turned on Tiffany "New York" Pollard and tried to kill her. This season of Project Runway, by contrast, is the taupe-colored, relaxed-fit chinos of reality TV. And a reunion show was not only unnecessary but utterly pointless.
Legitimately auf'd during the menswear challenge for not bothering to make a shirt for her model, Carmen returned last evening with a vengeance. She blasted her fellow designers for not missing her enough but instead acting grateful that they themselves hadn't been cut (who, after all, enters a competition with the intention of winning—that's just silly!). Then she tempted fate by mouthing off to Nina. When judges were asked to name the worst garments of the season (and they predictably danced around an answer), Nina quipped that the menswear challenge as a whole was a shitshow of unfinished hems, models without shirts—and then (snap!) cut to close-up on Carmen freaking out and sarcastically muttering, "Thanks, Nina," about 50 times. It took pitying hugs from Kit and Sweet P for her to finally calm her ass down a bit.